Willem Johan Kolff, you opened the bionic age. You invented the modern artificial kidney. You gave birth to the artificial heart. You started the major societies for bionic research. I have some questions for you that tells the world a little bit about just who this Kolff person really is. Let’s start by asking where were you born?

I was born in Leiden where my father was assistant in obstetrics. He was director of a sanitarium for tuberculosis. And we walked in the woods around the sanitarium. Doing so, he would tell me about his patients. So, there was deep concern. I know how much he was involved, not only in the superficial things, but in the whole patients.

And from high school, did you go directly to medical school?

The medical schools are all part of universities.

Did you go directly to the university?

Directly to university.

Which university?

Leiden.

Was it hard to get admitted?

There was no question about it, because my father had been to the University of Leiden and loyalty required that I would do the same. I had to work very hard, because I have dyslexia. I had a great difficulty in spelling for example. And dyslexia, that was not yet considered as something to be interested in for high school teachers.

Did you know what kind of a doctor you wanted to be when you were in the university?

I think I had seen my father’s sanitarium. I’d seen how concerned he was. And I wanted to be involved with patients. I was very much interested in the parts of my father that you do with the aggressive treatment of tuberculosis. Pneumothorax is one example. Pneumothorax was a [inaudible 2:42]. I had many patients that told me they had tuberculosis. My father had his own x-ray machine at the sanitarium. And you would very clearly try to fill as much air in the pleural cavity that you would get a satisfactory collapse of the sac area.

Since I was seven years old, I went every Saturday afternoon to the carpenter. Now, the carpenter had a job for my father and the condition was that he would teach me some of the skills of a carpenter. And he did so very religiously. The first time that I built something, I built a box. And I was so elated that I sang the whole way from the village to the sanitarium, which was two kilometers. I sang the whole way I was so happy. I’ve made many since. The making of things is in my blood. I prefer wood. If I can make anything of wood, I do that, rather than metal.

After medical school, I went to Groningen. Groningen had an outstanding professor of medicine. His name was Polak Daniëls. And when this same Polak Daniëls wanted six months off to study in Paris, which some people like to do, I was asked to take over his practice of internal medicine in The Hague. The Hague is not the capital, but it’s the city where the government lives and where a lot of rich people live.

Were you in Groningen when the Germans came into Holland?

On that day, I was not in Groningen. I [inaudible] who was very small. But [inaudible] and I were in The Hague for the funeral of her grandfather, [inaudible]. The day of that funeral, the Germans were overhead and threw out pamphlets that they were invaded. The Netherlands thought we better cooperate. It would be better for us. The [inaudible] pointed out that Germans also [inaudible] had no chance at all to defend it. So [inaudible 5:41].

As a doctor, did your life change after the Germans came?

Yes, it had all kinds of consequences. But the Germans came from – the Germans came in. I went to the hospital, the largest hospital in The Hague and I – the whole staff was together since the invasion. And the staff was together. And I knew many of them. I went in. I said, “Do you have a blood bank?” And they said no. I said, “Do you want me to set one up?” And they said yes. So, I was given a soldier with a gun, a lot of [inaudible] and I went to all the places where there were glass pieces of tubing that I would need to set up a blood bank. And in four days, a blood bank was working.

Which brings us, or me, to thinking you have tubing, you have blood. Is this where the concept of an artificial kidney first came to you?

We were standing in the hall of the university hospital in [inaudible 7:02]. There was no war yet, just a group of assistants with their white coats on just standing in the hall just talking. And they asked everybody, “What are you going to do?” And what would you like to do? I decided I want to make an artificial kidney. And I remember that the chief medical assistant in the medical school became very mad. You don’t do such a thing.

Did he say why you don’t do such a thing?

No, but they brought it up. And I pointed out it was possible. And that I wanted to do it. I have handled a lot of blood, started the blood banks. And handling a lot of it will teach you a lot of things. For example, if a [inaudible] they had commercially available tubes, you can see that’s [inaudible 8:23]. If you liked them on one side, you have a very vast surface area. And if you waited 24 hours, even the [inaudible] sedimentation rate would give you less area of plasma and cells [inaudible]. With that simple observation, I decided that it would be easy to…

It was difficult to get anything. This was just before the war. But I didn’t have much money and had no salary in the beginning in the Department of Medicine. But my father, fortunately, could support me. You could still sew several things out of artificial sausage skin. And that was not expensive. And it could last a month of artificial sausage skin. Which you get out of here, get [inaudible]. They’re much more beautiful to look at.

The first patient that you treated and took 500 milliliters of blood, did you get permission?

I don't think so.

What did you tell the patient?

Patient thanked me so much. And they say the first patient who was really treated just the other [inaudible], Maria Schafstad. You may have seen the name. Maria Schafstad was a Nazi sympathizer who was in [inaudible 10:07] and became ill, was then sent to the Kampen Hospital to my colleague, the surgeon. And he looked at her for a few days and she had what you would call hepatorenal syndrome. She was jaundiced and had had a high blood [inaudible].

After 11 – I think, I remember how [inaudible] it is. I had a very effective dialyzer. After 11 hours of dialysis, she was comatose when it started. I bent over her. I said, “Mrs. Schafstad, can you hear me?” And she looks at me, I repeated the question, “Mrs. Schafstad, can you hear me?” Upon which, she answered, “I’m going to divorce my husband.”

Yes, that’s one of your great observations. How many patients before this first success have you had who died?

Oh, there was a lot.

How many? About?

Oh, I’ll make a guess of that of 20 or 30 certainly.

Is it true that they told you you had to join the Nazi Party and you refused?

I’ve never been asked to join the Nazi Party.

All the doctors of medicine, during the German occupation, all the doctors of medicine on the same date sent their – signed their letters to Seyss-Inquart, who was the highest German at the time. But what they did, they sent their medical license to the organizations of Dutch possessions. And they canceled all of them.

The Germans canceled all of them?

No. The Dutch did.

The Dutch people canceled them themselves.

And since no Dutch doctor had a license, nobody could be buried, because nobody was legally dead.

So what happened?

The Germans came in. They began to put in most of the doctors, nearly all of them, in a concentration camp in Amersfoort, concentration camp that was also used for others when the Germans needed it. And all the Dutch doctors were put on wooden shoes in Amersfoort. Some of them found it very difficult, but they went nevertheless.

Did you get punished?

What?

Were you punished by the Germans?

Probably because I was the – there were only two doctors in the Kampen Hospital, maybe other [inaudible 13:39] too, but I was not sent to Amersfoort. I was not arrested. Before [inaudible] to so many Dutch physicians were put in the army, that there were not enough practicing physicians. And therefore, the [inaudible] of the medical side, two doctors from the university hospitals and put them in other places. And I was one of them. So, I was sent to Friesland. I lived it. Everything was frozen. Everything was snow. All the canals were frozen. You often couldn’t see where the canal was and where the road was. And I was the family doctor there in the cities of Dutch villages.

How did the other doctors react to your trying to build an artificial kidney?

There were very few physicians in the Netherlands that saw what I was doing and were interested. But I made several other designs of artificial kidneys. For example, cellophane tubing compressed between two plates, so I made several designs of artificial kidneys. But none of them was as effective as the rotating drum. I felt it was important before I [inaudible 15:20] it. I was so convinced that this was a possible way of doing it and that there was nothing actually, a scientific reason why it should not be possible. But I disregarded all the criticism of people that didn’t believe in it.

We had a society in the Netherlands called the [inaudible] society who had a meeting once a year. The main people that were there were internists. And the internists were the people that were supposed to use artificial kidneys, Professor Borst in Amsterdam, he and I were very friendly. Borst described how in Amsterdam they tried with my artificial kidney, they tried to treat three patients. Borst described how at the end of the patient, there were three patients, blood was on the walls of the room where it was done.

And everybody laughed his head off. And when Borst got through speaking, I stood up. I said at the time that Borst – I first have to say Borst and I were very friendly. And the time that Borst was in a concentration camp, I went to Amsterdam and I take his three patients there with the rotating drum artificial kidney. And none of these patients have any regret at all. And all these patients died by the way. At the end of my speech was that I’m very pleased that Professor [Borst is no longer in the concentration camp, but it [inaudible] for the artificial kidney, it would have been better if he had stayed there.

He was six-years old and you hid him.